Blame politics for social insecurity issues

January 3, 2018

Our declining benefit called Social Security was an interesting article pleading the case that Social Security has been repeatedly cut. Missing was the fact that Lyndon Johnson was the first to raid the Social Security protected account by using the money for his war on poverty, to no avail. Today the percent in poverty is the same. Social Security should be much healthier today.

The problem of people supporting themselves in the years ahead is scary. Even doubling Social Security is not enough. Many have not saved or prepared for their old age and with longer life expectancy, the explosion of medical cost and rising prices, the problem is becoming unmanageable.

It is not a problem unique to either party. They have both been lax in dealing with it, in large part because they see the solution in different ways and cannot agree and because they take the easy way to get elected.

Connected to that problem is the debt. I have to smile when letter writer Jim Healy complains about Trump and the debt. Under Obama the debt grew by $10 trillion, almost double the debt that he inherited. And no, it wasn't Bush's fault. The fault rests with a majority Democratic Congress who refused to acknowledge the impending crisis and were in bed with the banks, and lending institutions such as Fannie and Freddie. See articles on Congressman Barney and Senator Dodd.

Obama tried to solve the 2009 financial crises by spending our way out of it. That never has worked. Franklin Roosevelt, like Obama tried to spend us out of a recession and we still weren't out when World War II hit. Kennedy and Reagan had it right. They injected tax breaks and confidence and both had a turnaround of two years and a great economy followed.

Sadly, we are a divided country that makes a difficult political process nearly impossible. Being elected seems to be more important than the American people and fooling the average voter is pretty easy.

Name calling and firebombs as we see in these letters to the editor agitates the already deteriorating political system. Problem solving all starts with our primary concern being America.